


no, i'm no child but i don't feel grown up

by thelemonisinplay



Series: verity richardson cinematic universe (vrcu) [3]
Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Character Study, Coming Out, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28611528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelemonisinplay/pseuds/thelemonisinplay
Summary: “I think maybe I’m gay,” was what came out, stilted and soft in the manner of all of their conversations.“Oh,” said Dad. “Well, you’re not the only one.”Verity & Douglas find they have more in common than they'd previously imagined.
Relationships: Douglas Richardson & Verity Richardson
Series: verity richardson cinematic universe (vrcu) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2077494
Comments: 14
Kudos: 19





	no, i'm no child but i don't feel grown up

**Author's Note:**

> listen i'm embroiled in herclas hell and obviously verity is a lesbian, so, here we go, finally we're letting them bond in the most wildly self indulgent way. it's lockdown three, baby.
> 
> (title is shura's what happened to us?)

There had been an argument. Something about love, or friendship, or the washing up. Perhaps all three? Verity was unclear, in hindsight. But it had been an argument, and Phoebe had ended it by screaming that _Verity didn't fucking feel emotions like a normal person anyway, so what was the big deal_?

And Verity had left. Because that was what she was good at.

She'd ended up sitting in the cafe down the road, because it was raining, and she didn't really know where she was going anyway, so she'd gone in and sat down with a coffee. A mistake: what she’d needed was the walk, to focus all the excess energy she was carrying into movement. Sitting down left the rage bubbling up too viscerally.

Of course she _felt fucking emotions, Phoebe._ She just didn't feel the need to spill them all over the place like everybody else.

(Verity had, of course, said in a somewhat heated tone that if Phoebe could just stop having her fucking boyfriend round all the time then maybe there'd be more than one spare plate on any given day anyway and it wouldn't _matter_ if Verity left her washing up for later.

And Phoebe had taken the opportunity to turn it around on Verity’s love life.)

It was still raining when she left the cafe, but she ignored it, the buzz of caffeine fuelling her as much as her fury.

It was funny. She'd thought ...

She'd thought things might be different, with Phoebe. They'd known each other since Phoebe had joined Verity’s grammar school for sixth form, ten or so years ago now. Phoebe had been living down in Reading after uni, back near her parents, commuting into a bland office job in London every day. Then, of course, she’d applied to a postgraduate course in Human Rights Law at the University of Manchester, moving up just as Verity’s tenancy had ended. So they’d got a little flat together, just the two of them, and Verity had thought perhaps that things were looking up.

_Aren't you going to be living with your boyfriend?_ , Phoebe had asked, when Verity had first brought up the possibility of flatsharing back in June.

_I’m going to break up with him_ , Verity had said. And then she had, two months before the end of the tenancy in September, before he'd even brought up renewing the contract. Adam had stared at her for a little while, shrugged, and said something about it making sense, and he'd left the next morning.

She didn't miss him exactly. He'd not been a bad boyfriend by any means, he’d been fine. But that was the pattern, of her repeatedly dating boys who were just fine, and then getting bored and breaking up with them once she’d realised she was never going to be inspired to let them in. And this was what Phoebe had thrown across the kitchen that day: _at least I can hold down a real relationship, you just drag boys along until they’ve fallen for you and then you panic and leave._

Phoebe had always thought Verity was weird and closed off. She’d never exactly said it so bluntly before, but Verity had sensed it. Thought it was weird that she didn’t call her mum daily like Phoebe did, that they’d known each other five years before Verity ever mentioned her dad, was deeply baffled to hear, earlier in the year, that Verity had suddenly developed a relationship with a little sister Phoebe had never even known existed.

It wasn't just Phoebe, of course. Her mum seemed concerned at the way Verity never seemed particularly enthused about any relationships she was in. People at work only found out she'd broken up with Adam after they asked how he was coping with the move, and she'd had to fill them in; they said she didn't seem very upset by it.

Verity was beginning to have a little inkling as to why. The general secrecy of course she’d always put down to everything she’d lived through in her early teens: the school changes, her father’s alcoholism. The string of unsatisfying relationships with men, she’d assumed was some psychological hangup relating to her weird relationship with her dad, or maybe the divorces she'd lived through as a child. She'd never been to therapy to confirm or deny these theories, but she'd wondered if she ought to go and work on becoming a more functional person.

But now ...

It was starting to get dark. _Fucking winter_. But it had only been half an hour - there was no way Phoebe would have chilled out by now. Absolutely no chance. And even if she had, Verity wasn't exactly emotionally prepared to swan back into the flat, bump into Phoebe’s boyfriend Dan, apologise.

Where was there, then?

She’d calmed down enough that sitting down might be an option. But where? She’d only just had a coffee and that had been a mistake, she didn’t want to spend money on another one and risk exacerbating the anxiety that was already humming under her skin. The library was too far away, now, for her to walk to without getting even more drenched than she already was. And she wanted … well, really, what she wanted was to sit on a sofa, not in a public place.

A friend’s, maybe.

Only there wasn't really anybody in Manchester – oh, she had plenty of friends, but nobody close, nobody more than a casual drinking buddy. Nobody she'd feel comfortable appearing at the home of, soaking wet and still visibly thrumming with rage and, quietly but perhaps noticeably, upset.

Mum was nearly two hundred miles away in Berkshire, and in any case she hadn't let herself be this vulnerable with her mother since she was in her teens. (She should work on that, too). Who else did she know? Only Phoebe, really, but even they weren’t _close_ close, not like they’d been at eighteen. And of course, Phoebe was the problem.

_Fuck_.

Verity had found herself at the train station in her wandering, and made for the Costa. Hot chocolate, then. She might as well warm herself up while she considered what to do next.

The girl behind the counter at Costa was maybe her own age, pretty, long dark hair. Undercut. Rainbow pin. Smiled at Verity in the way that boys always had, soft and hopeful, even with Verity clearly looking completely absurd after a half-hour walk in the pouring rain.

And that was it, wasn’t it?

She sat at an empty table and got out her phone, surreptitiously glancing up at the pretty girl every so often, feeling absolutely ridiculous. Twenty-seven was far too old for a crisis like this (even if she’d known it, really, for a while; even if she’d noticed herself glancing at girls more than boys since she was about fifteen and stuck a lid on that particular realisation because she hadn’t wanted to examine it, even if it wasn’t just a pretty café employee that had served as the catalyst – she’d worked out somewhere between the end of Adam and the early days of living with Phoebe exactly what the issue was, really, with her inability to have fulfilling relationships with men).

Still. Better to have tiny crushes on pretty girls in cafes than anybody else. Safer.

“Verity?”

She looked up from her phone, panic stirring up within her. She wasn’t supposed to be recognised here, she wasn’t anywhere near her usual polished self – she wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t far off, sitting here aimlessly in a train station, soaking wet, sexuality quiz open on the private mode of her browser.

Dad.

“ _What?_ ”

“I’m picking Millie up today, I did text and ask if you wanted to come along. I had to change here for the train anyway.”

Verity stared. She’d not looked at her phone all day, until she’d left, and then she’d been ignoring notifications in case they were Phoebe, who she wasn’t ready to talk to. She’d missed the text.

She nodded, aiming for businesslike rather than vulnerable.

“Yeah. Okay.”

He bought her ticket – she argued, he insisted – and they got on the train. Two hours, Manchester to Barrow-in-Furness, and then four back to Fitton. They wouldn’t be at Dad’s until ten, and then … well, it was Friday. There was the whole weekend to let things settle with Phoebe. If she wanted to.

“Is everything alright?” Dad asked, five minutes into the journey. She’d snagged the window seat and was staring out of it, into the dark and the rain, and of course he’d found her sitting in a train station for seemingly no reason and she’d agreed to join him for a weekend at his for the first time with nothing but her phone (dying, no charger) and her bag (containing nothing but a packet of ready salted Hula Hoops, her purse – wallet? – and a spare jumper she’d dropped in yesterday in case it was cold at work). Of course he was worried.

“Yeah,” she lied comfortably. “Just needed a break. Phoebe’s boyfriend’s round again.” Or would be by now, anyway; his upcoming arrival had kickstarted that argument earlier. “Plus I’ve not seen Millie in ages.”

That was true, of course. Emily didn’t trust Verity after all those years apart – which Verity, to be fair, couldn’t entirely fault her for – so they only saw each other around Dad. And he lived so far from both of them that matching up their schedules in a way that all three of them were available was by no means easy.

“Okay,” said Dad. Verity could tell he didn’t entirely believe her, which was frustrating, but he didn’t push. And they spent the next two hours intermittently talking about nothing, which was stilted and difficult as ever, offering Verity very little in the way of distraction.

Phoebe swirled around her mind the whole journey, her friendship and her words and the fact that they’d been friends since they were sixteen and had never fought like that before. Oh, they’d had disagreements, and passed judgement on each other, but it had never been like _that_. She’d never let herself get so angry usually, repressed everything until she was alone, but it had snuck up on her and poured itself out before she’d even had the chance to be aware of it.

It was a relief when Millie joined them in Barrow, chattering away aimlessly at them both with such enthusiasm that she was much more successful than Dad at pulling Verity out of her own head.

“Hi Verity!” she said cheerfully as they met her at the station, throwing her arms around her sister. “I didn’t know you were coming! Why are we getting the train, Dad?”

“There’s a problem with my car, darling. Now, come on, we’d better get to the platform to get our seats.”

In the four hour journey from Barrow back down to Fitton, Verity barely thought about Phoebe once. It helped, of course, that her phone had died almost as soon as she’d got onto the train in Manchester, but mainly distraction came in the form of her sister.

“What does it mean if you get a snap from a boy, Verity?” she asked. She was looking down at her phone, nose almost comically wrinkled.

“Snapchat? Could be anything,” said Verity. “Who is he?”

“It’s not Josh, is it?” Dad said warily. Verity had heard something about a Josh, a boy who’d repeatedly tried to ask her sister out despite her continued disinterest.

“No, Dad,” said Millie with a roll of her eyes. “I got detention for threatening to punch him, remember? He doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

“Nice one,” said Verity. Her sister remained a mystery to her after less than a year, couldn’t be more different from herself at fourteen: open and honest and cheerful with no apparent interest in self-control. She seemed happier for it than Verity had ever been in secrecy.

“Thanks,” said Millie brightly. “When did you have your first boyfriend, then? My friends have all at least kissed somebody by now. Is that normal?”

“Everybody’s different,” said Verity. “I was in Year Eleven, I think, but I had some friends who were much younger, and some friends who didn’t kiss anybody til university, or who have still never kissed anybody because they don’t want to. If you want it to, it’ll happen.”

The dubious honour of being Verity’s first kiss at fifteen fell to somebody who had transitioned at eighteen, after they’d all finished their A levels and escaped across the country. Her name was Nina, now, and Verity was still casually in touch with her in the way that she was casually in touch with a lot of people from school – she liked her tweets every so often, watched her Instagram stories, and sent her a happy birthday message once a year. She was the only one of Verity’s exes she was in touch with at all, actually. Even Adam had disappeared completely and that had only been months ago – she’d not seen him in town once, and she’d blocked him on social media after he’d left.

“Oh, good,” said Millie. Dad was listening closely, Verity noticed – she was sure he knew all about her first relationship anyway, sure Mum had explained it all to him. She’d certainly explained the breakup the following year, Verity had overheard her on the phone. Verity, seventeen years old, had been furious, but instead of saying anything she’d simply stopped telling her mother about her life. Stupid, really.

They arrived into Fitton at ten, and then it was a fifteen-minute walk back to Dad’s. Verity wasn’t dressed for the cold of the night, just for the late afternoon Manchester rain, and shivered the whole way there. Dad noticed, wordlessly put the heating on as they got in, for which Verity was reluctantly grateful.

He made hot chocolate for Millie – he’d offered it to Verity, but she’d declined – and then sent her up to bed once she’d finished. _I’m not a child_ , she’d complained, but then had yawned. Dad laughed at her, they said their goodnights, and she headed up to her bedroom without further complaint.

Dad put the telly on downstairs, some repeat of some soap opera Verity was fairly certain he didn’t care for any more than she did. Then offered her a drink, waving a bottle of wine at her. Verity eyed it suspiciously, heart somewhere in the region of her throat as it often was when it came to her father and alcohol. She agreed eventually, just to see what would happen (and god, she couldn’t help but test him all the time, even now, even though he’d never once failed and she’d always hated herself for it). Obviously, he poured a single glass and handed it to her. Passed again. As usual.

“Can I borrow a phone charger?” she asked. “Mine’s dead.”

He passed her a charger and sat down on the sofa. Changed the channel, ended up on some documentary about opera, of all things. She’d forgotten that about him.

Her phone started up. There were new notifications now, on top of all the ones she’d ignored earlier in her rage. Missed calls. Apology texts. Worries. _Please at least tell me you’re alive_.

_I’m alive_ , she types. _My phone died. I’m sorry. I’ll be back by Sunday._

“Everything okay?” said Dad, glancing over from his bloody opera programme.

“Yeah,” she said. It wasn’t, of course. Phoebe was going to want to talk about this, when she got home, and what was she going to say? She couldn’t carry on with her usual act of brushing everything over and pretending nothing was up; Phoebe wouldn’t let her get away with that. Not this time – not after they’d had an argument bigger than anything that had come between them before, and all over a fucking plate. But what was the explanation, really?

_Glad you’re safe. Love you. See you Sunday xxx_

Of course _Phoebe_ didn’t fucking think twice before saying something like that.

“You sure?” Dad asked. “I found you sitting in a train station, soaking wet. And then you immediately agreed to come and stay here. It’s not exactly what I’m used to seeing from you.”

He was right, of course. She was being weird, weirder than her classic secrets-and-lies let-nobody-in weird that people like her mother were usually concerned about. No, this was visibly having a breakdown in front of her fucking father.

She left her phone, text unanswered, and joined him on the sofa. Sipped at her wine, staring blankly at the opera documentary on the telly. She should say something to reassure him that yes, actually, she was fine, but she couldn’t quite work out how.

They settled into silence. An uncomfortable silence. She was determinedly staring at the television, mouth clamped tight in an attempt to shut down the whirl of confusing emotion going on in her head. She could feel him glancing at her every so often, but he didn’t say anything. Well, of course he didn’t, what the fuck would he say?

The opera documentary ended, and Verity wasn’t sure she’d taken any of it in. She’d finished her wine, though, the glass still clutched in her hand because she thought moving to put it down might trigger some emotion or other.

“I might head up to bed, then,” said Dad as a trailer for some new BBC drama started playing. “If you’re sure you’re okay, that is.”

He stood up. Verity turned, slowly, away from the television, looked up at her father. _Goodnight_ , was what she was going to say. Intended to say. “I think maybe I’m gay,” was what came out, stilted and soft in the manner of all of their conversations.

_What the fuck, what the_ fuck _was that_ , she was screaming inside her head, because she’d barely admitted it to herself, had only started entertaining the possibility seriously that summer, and why was her father of all people the first person she’d managed to get it out to, out loud? Why not someone like Daisy from work, who was actually bi, or Benjy from uni who was gay?

“Oh,” said Dad, eyes wide, sitting back down next to her, tentatively putting an arm around her. Something soft, and warm, and nice, something comforting, and instinctively the defensive, protective parts of herself wanted to wriggle away, disappear out of the door back onto a train and sneak back into her bedroom at home. “Well, you’re not the only one,” he said, carefully, which was so surprising that she found herself settling into his embrace.

“You … what?”

“Well, bisexual, technically,” he amended, and she could feel him relaxing, too. This felt old, suddenly, like something falling back into place: she remembered being ten, curled up in this very position on another sofa, in another house, in another town, and confessing the tiny secrets of a child. “I’ve only ever been married to women, but I’ve had relationships with men before. I’m surprised you didn’t know, your mother certainly does.”

“Oh,” said Verity, stupidly. Of course Mum hadn’t told her – Verity hadn’t wanted to hear about her dad, and so Mum had stopped updating her. And it wasn’t as though Verity had had a chance to talk to her mother about her own sexuality, anyway; she’d barely processed it herself. “When? Like – recently – or?”

“Between marriages,” said Dad. “One in particular was on and off for years, though I wouldn’t recommend that. We can’t stand each other now.”

Verity found herself full of questions, wanting all the details of this, his history, their shared experience. More curious, for once, than conflicted and defensive. Forgetting, _allowing_ herself to forget, her refusal thus far to discuss their past.

“When?”

“First time round was when your mother and I separated for a while, before you were born. And then we were friends again, until his divorce coincided with mine, and then … oh, we were on and off for a few years before I married Emily.”

“How come you never introduced us?” Verity frowned – was it some lingering homophobic sentiment, perhaps, preventing her at ten from knowing that her father had a _boyfriend_? Mum surely wouldn’t have stopped that, would she?

“Like I said, we were on and off,” said Dad. “You were only small. I didn’t want to introduce anybody who wasn’t going to stick around. Course, Emily didn’t either in the end, but …”

“But you didn’t _say_ anything,” said Verity, which she knew was absurdly childish even as it came out of her mouth.

“Well, no. It was an incredibly unhealthy on-off relationship that stopped and started when one of us decided we were going to marry somebody new, I thought maybe I wouldn’t share that particular side of my life with my ten-year-old daughter.” There was a pause, while Verity attempted to realign her reality with this new one: she was a lesbian, then, and probably ought to start telling people that. It would explain her inability to have relationships with men. And her father was bisexual, and apparently always had been.

“Still,” he continued, apparently oblivious to Verity’s train of thought. “I suppose I didn’t exactly protect you from the worst of me after all.”

Verity wasn't sure how to respond to that. Because of course he hadn't; that was why they were here, now, having a genuine conversation for the first time when she was twenty-seven years old.

"I’m sorry, for what it's worth," he said, and he sounded ... well, carefully casual in the way that she often aimed for when she was trying to present an emotionless façade. Classic Richardson technique.

"Me, too," said Verity, aiming for the same tone. Because she was. And she felt as though if she didn't admit it here and now, maybe she never would, and for once in her life she was trying to be vulnerable. She might never have the opportunity again.

"You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he said firmly. And then, slowly, loosened his hold on her, pulling his arm away. “I probably should go to bed now, though. Let me show you to your room.”

**Author's Note:**

> obv didn't name douglas's Mystery Backstory Boyfriend so you can pretend it's anyone if you so desire, but it fits right into the extensive herclas backstory i've been developing in discussions about on tumblr.org.uk for the past month or so ... for me? it's herc :)


End file.
